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      "author": "steemitboard",
      "body": "Congratulations @joybran! You received a personal award!\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@joybran/birthday3.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 3 years!</td></tr></table>\n\n<sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@joybran) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](https://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=joybran)_</sub>\n\n\n###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!",
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      "body": "@@ -1,24 +1,4 @@\n-%5Bon-strike-sign.jpg%5D\n (htt\n",
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      "title": "On Strike!"
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      "body": "[on-strike-sign.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYShKiSmGueRuArZudP9YeSsQHZnddY5daH8GDjXusWBv/on-strike-sign.jpg)\nAs I was traveling down the street today, I saw a group of people--maybe fifty or sixty--carrying signs saying On Strike! Since about half of them were strolling along the sidewalk in front of a suburban school while the other half sat under makeshift tents socializing, I assumed they were members of the teachers' union on strike against the school, even though school isn't in session until next week. I didn't see any signs explaining what they were on strike against or why, but I guess that doesn't make any difference these days as long as they proclaim that they are \"on strike.\" Maybe they didn't feel any need to justify their strike since there was very little traffic on the side street where the school sat empty.\n\nI was only mildly interested in their \"grievances,\" but I did think of a couple of questions I would like to ask them if I could expect an honest answer or if I thought there would be any point to a confrontation over what they must consider a rational action.\n\nThe first question that popped into my mind was \"If you don't like your job, why don't you just quit and find a better job?\" It seems like an obvious question. There are no slaves anymore, in spite of the idiot who coined the term \"wage slaves.\" Anybody can quit any job for any reason with no adverse consequences. Some people even object to a prospective employer asking why the person they are interviewing for a job resigned from his or her previous position.\n\nIn contrast, it is becoming more and more difficult for an employer to get rid of a useless employee, especially if the employee is a member of a union. Multiply that difficulty if the incompetent employee happens to be a member of a protected minority.\n\nAn honest answer to the question may be, \"I might not be able to find a better job.\" Or even, \"I might not be able to find a better job before I run out of money because I have never learned to live within my means.\" Of course, the second answer would probably be phrased differently. \"I might run out of money because they don't pay me a living wage.\" Even teachers, who make a pretty good living relative to other occupations, would probably claim to be making less than a \"living wage.\"\n\nOne reason nobody would want to give an honest answer to the question is that they would then have to consider why they are so ungrateful to the one organization willing to pay them the salary (or benefits) they are protesting. If they quit the job about which they are complaining, the strikers would also have the option of starting their own business, but that would make their ingratitude even more apparent when they discover the difficulty of finding good employees.\n\nPerhaps the most honest answer to the first question is also the answer to the second question that occurred to me. \"Is it just easier to gang up with your fellow malcontents and try to extort your employer than it would be to take responsibility for finding an occupation you like?\" Now there is a question I would never expect anyone to answer honestly.",
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      "body": "![control.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmf4A6u1LtaPg7bjyiW9AgXrpfpTSoqWvXY3ivrWDkVgic/control.jpg)\nMost of us spend a lot of our precious time trying to control other human beings. Perhaps it is natural for us to try to control the people closest to us; our family, friends, business colleagues, and acquaintances. There is even moral justification in trying to control the small human beings who are dependent upon us--our children. We have a moral imperative to control them enough to keep them from harm, but it can be hard to find the line that separates keeping them from harm and restraining them from learning and growing as independent individuals.\n\nWith other members of our family, there is less justification for trying to control them, but we are capable of a lot of rationalizations about needing to protect them from themselves. When a loved one doesn't seem able to control himself or herself, it is very tempting to step in and try to control them, even when they don't ask us for help. It can be hard to remember that there is a difference between giving them the help they are asking for and trying to control them in ways they don't want.\n\nFriends are abler than family to cut us off if we become too controlling, but there are sometimes temptations to try to control them anyway. That never helps the friendship.\n\nIn our business or work life, there are boundaries, either contractual or customary, to help us manage our relationships, such as between employer and employee, buyer and seller, supplier and customer, manager and subordinate, and between co-workers. Still, there are times when we can indulge in manipulative behavior that seeks to control someone. That kind of behavior sometimes \"works\" in the short run, but it usually carries a heavy cost in the long run.\n\nThere is one area of life where our attempts to control others does not seem to be punished. In fact, we are praised for doing our civic duty when we try to use the force of government to control others. Whether it is voting to punish our fellow \"citizens\" for doing or not doing something or campaigning for certain edicts that would punish them for doing or not doing something, we are encouraged to feel self-righteous for the violence we are promoting. We have been brainwashed from childhood to believe that the majority has the right and even the responsibility to control the behavior of everyone.\n\nCertainly, there are rules that we all agree we should follow in order to maintain a functioning society. Nobody wants to be murdered, assaulted, or robbed, so we can all agree that those behaviors must be controlled. However, the vast majority of people have the self-control not to murder, assault, or rob their fellow men without the threat of violence being the only thing stopping them from those actions. Those people who don't have the self-control to refrain from murder, assault or robbery generally are not controlled by threats of violence either. That is why criminals don't obey the laws that try to prohibit their crimes.\n\nGiven that threats of violence seldom control criminals who know they are doing wrong, why do we believe we can control people who want to do things they don't believe are wrong? Rulers create victimless crimes by issuing edicts or writing regulations. Some people may alter their behavior due to the threats of violence, but most will not. They will do what they think is right for them and resent the attempt to control their choices.\n\nThe people we have the least possibility of controlling are the ones we allow to rule us. People who choose to become politicians and bureaucrats believe they have the right and even the duty to control others. Consequently, they are the least constrained by the normal moral admonition against harming others. That makes them as dangerous if not more dangerous than criminals.\n\nThe one person you can and should control is yourself. If you want to live a decent, moral life, all you have to do is give up trying to control others and focus on controlling the one person over whom you have complete control.",
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      "body": "@@ -1,12 +1,8 @@\n-The \n %22Curious\n",
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      "body": "The \"Curiously, there aren’t many political concepts Americans have borrowed from Turkish history, but the deep state seems to be one of them.\n\nThe Turkish phrase derin devlet literally means “deep state.” According to historian Ryan Gingeras, the term “generally refers to a kind of shadow or parallel system of government in which unofficial or publicly unacknowledged individuals play important roles in defining and implementing state policy.”\n\nThis concept of a deep state, Gingeras continues, is used to “explain why and how agents employed by the state execute policies that directly contravene the letter and spirit of the law.” Breaking the law, of course, often means employing criminals. Gingeras, a specialist in organized crime in Turkey, looks at the underbelly of the Turkish deep state to examine how alliances between generals, statesmen and “narcotic traffickers, paramilitaries, terrorists, and other criminals” are formed. (Elsewhere, Gingeras traces the heroin connection, noting that the Turkish deep state itself is riven by factional rivalries.)\"\n\nhttps://daily.jstor.org/the-unacknowledged-origins-of-the-deep-state/\n\nThe term entered into English via former Canadian diplomat, poet, and Berkeley professor emeritus of English Peter Dale Scott, regarding the Susurluk scandal (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susurluk_scandal) \nthat followed the crash of a Mercedes into a flatbed truck in that town northwest of Istanbul in the late 90’s late one night, killing all but one passenger, including 3 men supposed to be arch enemies, the assistant police chief of Istanbul, the leader of the Kurdish faction in the Parliament, and a world-class drug lord and murder for hire expert Abdullah Çatlı, the leader of the Grey Wolves (who was a contract killer on Interpol's red list) along with his movie star girlfriend. \n\nPrior to this, Çatlı (pronounced Chutluh) had escaped from a Swiss prison with the aid of a helicopter — a NATO helicopter. \n\nWhen the state police learned of the incident they rushed to the scene but too late because the local police had already investigated and it was all over the papers.  Turkey learned that day that they were governed not by the public state but by a deep state.  The US, indeed the West, has yet to learn this fact about its own countries.\n\nÇatlı's operation, the Gray Wolves, is often described as the beginnings of Gladio-B, a Turkish and Central Asian continuation of the NATO intelligence program known as Operation Gladio in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which implemented what they called the \"strategia della tensione\", with dozens of bombings of banks, school buses, train stations, and any venue that would raise public ire and anxiety.  In this clip from the BBC, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, interviewed in his life cell in prison for the Peteano bombing, explains the motive behind the strategy.\n\nhttps://youtu.be/LN8zclexV1A",
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      "author": "cheetah",
      "body": "Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:\nhttps://voluntaryistliving.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-voluntaryist/",
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      "author": "joybran",
      "body": "<img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17\" src=\"https://voluntaryistliving.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/girl-standing-broken-chains-e1507938509499-300x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" />\n\nMy blog is called Voluntaryist Living because I’m writing about living my life as a voluntaryist, but what exactly is a voluntaryist? The Merriam-Webster dictionary, which bills itself as “America's most trusted online dictionary for English word definitions, meanings, and pronunciation,” doesn’t even have a definition for “voluntaryist.”\n\nI don’t know how many people identify themselves as voluntaryists, but I see the number has been growing for the last few years. You usually have to go to Wikipedia to get a decent definition of words like “voluntaryist” that haven’t made it into the dictionaries yet.\n\nWhen people ask me whether I’m a liberal or a conservative, or more often assume that I am one or the other, I say that I am neither. Then they might say “Ah, a libertarian.” No, not that either, although they are getting closer. Most of them look confused when I say voluntaryist, so I follow up with “I’m a person who believes that all interactions between human beings should be voluntary.” Many still look confused because they think that is too obvious to be a separate political philosophy. If it sounds obviously right to them, <!--more-->it is because they have never considered which of their daily interactions aren’t voluntary.\n\nIt is a rare person who might say “Oh, you’re an anarcho-capitalist who doesn’t vote.” Closer still, but not quite right. I did identify as an anarcho-capitalist before I heard about voluntaryism, but I have come to think that voluntaryism describes my philosophy better than anarcho-capitalism, especially since the meanings of both anarchism and capitalism are so widely disputed.\n\nIf a voluntaryist is someone with a unique philosophy, what are the characteristics of that belief system? How is it similar to and different from other philosophies, especially political philosophies? Voluntaryists agree with liberals in their concerns about human rights and human well-being but disagree about the best means to achieve those desired ends. We agree with conservatives about the benefits of free markets but disagree about the use of force to achieve social goals.\n\nWe are close enough to libertarians that, in many circumstances, we would not reject the label as misleading, the way we would reject other labels like liberal and conservative, socialist and nationalist, communist and fascist. Many libertarians might be called voluntaryists, based on their specific beliefs, although they haven’t considered identifying as such.\n\nBoth liberals and conservatives talk a lot about freedom, but neither believe in the foundational idea of self-ownership which lies at the heart of liberty. Wikipedia defines it best. “Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity, and be the exclusive controller of one's own body and life.” Most libertarians believe in self-ownership in theory, but are willing to condone some restrictions in practice. Voluntaryists believe in self-ownership and the responsibility that goes with it as a moral absolute.\n\nMany libertarians consider the non-aggression principle the primary requisite for libertarianism. According to Wikipedia, \"the non-aggression principle (or NAP; also called the non-aggression axiom, the anti-coercion, zero aggression principle or non-initiation of force) is an ethical stance that asserts that aggression is inherently wrong.\" Although voluntaryists believe in the NAP as an essential principle, it is not sufficient as a foundational belief for several reasons. Aggression and non-aggression are too complicated to define absolutely.\n\nMerriam-Webster defines aggression in three ways: “a forceful action or procedure (such as an unprovoked attack) especially when intended to dominate or master; the practice of making attacks or encroachments (especially unprovoked violation by one country of the territorial integrity of another); and hostile, injurious, or destructive behavior or outlook especially when caused by frustration.”\n\nBecause aggression can be defined as an attitude as well as specific behavior, it is too open to differences in perception to be truly useful as a moral guide. Also, there is the element of “provoked,” which can also be perceived differently by different people. While it is easy enough to say that the aggressor is the one who stuck first physically, there is plenty of disagreement about what constitutes provocation.\n\nCan words ever justify a physical attack? Perhaps they can if they are perceived as threatening. But that is a slippery slope. There have been some recent news articles about police officers being absolved of blame in the deaths of unarmed civilians because they believed their lives to be threatened, in spite of the fact that most reasonable people would find that belief ludicrous under the circumstances shown in videos of the confrontation.\n\nFor voluntaryists, it is more useful to speak of violence and the threat of violence rather than aggression. The NAP is most useful as a guideline for behavior in understanding that the person who initiates force or the threat of force is in violation of the principle and therefore is under a moral obligation to make whole the person he or she harmed by the violence or threat of violence.\n\nPerhaps the essential difference between voluntaryists and libertarians (as well as all other political philosophies) is the rejection of political means. All voluntary organizations are governed by rules, but those rules only apply to people who have voluntarily joined the organization and can freely leave. Any group that can be entered voluntarily and left voluntarily could be said to be governed voluntarily because whatever rules are in effect are explicitly consented to by the members of the organization.\n\nIn contrast, all political governments enforce their rules through violence or threats of violence against people who happen to reside in the territory over which they claim jurisdiction, regardless of consent. Every government is ruled by mandatory laws that nobody consents to either explicitly or implicitly. Remaining in the land where one was born is NOT an implicit consent to obey whatever edicts have been imposed by some “authority.”\n\nAll governments acquire all their resources through some form of taxation, which is either theft or extortion because all taxes are enforced through violence or threat of violence. Likewise, all government edicts are enforced through violence or threat of violence. Because all governments claim a monopoly on the use of legalized violence within their claimed territories, all political governments are inherently illegitimate and immoral.\n\nFor a voluntaryist, any attempt to use the force of government is a form of violence. Participation in the political process, whether through voting or running for office, is always an attempt to use the violence of government to enforce your preferences.\n\nEven if you are voting for someone who, for example, promises to lower tax rates, you are trying to force your preference for lower taxes on some people who may believe that higher taxes are necessary for some “noble” reason. You are also stating with your vote that you want those lower tax rates rather than the “no taxes” which you may believe is the moral stance. Worse than that, you have no control over what “your” candidate will do once in office. Even if he keeps his promise on taxes, he may do other things that you find more immoral.\n\nMany libertarians consider voting a form of self-defense rather than aggression because they see it as the only way to prevent others from forcing THEIR preferences on them. This view of self-defense is one of the things that we voluntaryists see as a weakness of the NAP. It is too easy to define self-defense so broadly that it becomes a justification for aggression and the use of force.\n\nHowever, aside from the question of whether it is possible to vote in “self-defense,” we see more subtle problems with participation in the political process. Even if you realize that your vote has no chance of affecting the outcome of an election, your participation is evidence of consent to the result. Psychologically, it gives you a vested interest in the issue, which can compromise your sense of your own morality.\n\nBesides, any time or effort spent in deciding who or what to vote for, or trying to convince others how to vote, is time and effort that you could better spend living your life as a sovereign individual. As social beings who naturally desire peace and prosperity, our time is best spent creating value for others who will freely trade with us.\n\nThe dominant attitude of a voluntaryist is “live and let live.” We control our own goals and purposes but we cannot and should not seek to control the goals and purposes of others. We can find great joy in pursuing our own interests, creating goods and services that others value, and building relationships with people who are willing to deal with us voluntarily. Trying to control other people against their will is usually an exercise in frustration. Succeeding in gaining the power to control others is the path toward corruption.\n\nAs human beings, we are by nature capable of both great good and great evil. Minding our own business and looking for voluntary ways to interact with others tends to bring out the best in our natures. Trying to force others to do what we want rather than what they want brings out the worst.\nWhile it is true that we need to protect ourselves from those who wish us harm, there are both healthy and unhealthy ways to accomplish that objective. Feeding our anger and insisting on “justice” in an unjust world is not a healthy way. We can find freedom in an unfree world by accepting the reality of the evil and mitigating it the best we can without putting our energy into fighting it with violence.\n\nFor example, taxation is theft, but getting angry about it and risking your life and freedom by refusing to pay is not the way to live and let live. It is much less stressful to look for ways to minimize the taxes you have to pay and just pay the ones you can’t avoid. As an individual, you have a lot of options in how you live your life and the trade-offs you choose in making money and keeping your money. That includes how much risk you are ready to face and even how much discomfort you are willing to endure to avoid various taxes. No-one can make those decisions for you.\n\nOne of the most misunderstood aspects of freedom and voluntaryism is responsibility. Voluntaryists, like libertarians, are sometimes accused of being libertines, apparently in the sense of being unrestrained by morality and seeking freedom without responsibility. The opposite is the case. Voluntaryists have to take the responsibility of developing their own moral code rather than mindlessly accepting the rules of “morality” set down by some “authority.”\n\nVoluntaryists understand that freedom without responsibility is, in fact, impossible. Unlike slaves, free people cannot try to escape the responsibility for their actions by claiming that they were forced to take those steps. Even those people who attempt to abdicate their responsibility for their actions, cannot truly escape answerability because they are the ones who suffer the consequences of their actions.\n\nTo live life as a voluntaryist does require different characteristics from those customarily inculcated by our society from childhood. We learn patriotism, belief in democracy, obedience to authority, conformity, and that right ends justify any means. Some of the ideas that are drilled into the impressionable minds of little children are ridiculous when stated honestly, but they are still hard to overcome. For example, ordinary people cannot be trusted to run their own lives, but they are fully capable of electing rulers who will not be corrupted by the power of having a monopoly on legalized violence. And those rulers are more capable of running everyone’s lives than even the smartest rational human being who has no desire to run anyone else’s life.\n\nThe first step in freeing one’s mind from the irrational beliefs that have been drilled into it is to recognize that the authorities we have been trained to trust are the ones who have done us the most harm. Libertarian and former history professor Tom Woods calls it “educational malpractice” and provides a great deal of historical information that refutes what mandatory government indoctrination camps taught us for so many of our formative years.\n\nThe first skill that we need to develop is critical thinking. According to the Foundation for Critical Thinking, “critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” Another definition is “the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself.” We can develop our critical thinking skills by self-directed, self-disciplined examination of our own thought processes.\n\nWe must re-examine every basic assumption about life that we received from parents, teachers, and other authority figures. There is no need to blame the parents and teachers who damaged our ability to think critically. Even the best of parents with the best of intentions can’t pass on the knowledge they never acquired themselves.\n\nWe can open our minds to new information and to new ways of examining information. If we honestly question everything we have been taught, we can learn to tell the difference between facts that match our experience of life and the propaganda that motivated us to act in ways contrary to our own best interests.\n\nTo exercise our self-ownership and live a life of freedom, we must consciously choose our purpose and our goals. To write down our goals on paper where we can read and reread them is the best way to assure that we are making our own decisions rather than allowing others to make the most critical decisions for us. It isn’t easy to examine one’s life in the depth necessary to do this written exercise, but it is the surest way to claim control over one’s life.\n\nBy consciously choosing to live independently and fulfill our own deepest desires, we can indeed take control of our lives. Instead of reacting to others and just accepting whatever shows up in our experiences, we can find proactive ways to create the life we want. This strategy applies to all aspects of life: health, relationships, financial, spiritual, emotional. We can exercise more control than we ever believed once we take responsibility for choosing the things we want in life. The more independence we can imagine, the more independent we can be.\n\nLive and let live is an attitude, but it is also a habit, or more accurately a whole group of habits. Even if you have had bad practices in the past like resentment, anger, jealousy, or gossip, you can change those patterns once you become aware of them and consciously set goals to practice better habits in the future. If you fill your life with goals based on creativity, production, learning, and understanding, there won’t be room for the old harmful habits. But you have to make commitments to yourself, and you have to hold yourself accountable for keeping those obligations on a daily basis. Nobody is flawless in starting new habits, but anyone can change their habits if they have a big enough reason and keep that reason always in sight.",
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      "memo": "@joybran Good day,  I'm contacting you on behalf of the Steem platform as you are currently witness voting for @tdv.witness  who no longer is supporting the platform.   We are campaigning to clear non supporting witness and vote for those who are making the platform better for community. If you could retract your vote from the inactive account @tdv.witness , it would benefit the whole platform, and Steem would be grateful.  If you are looking for a witness to replace this vote, I support @enginewitty for his community involvement; you can check his page to learn more about what he does.  Thank you and have a great rest of your day!",
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      "author": "joybran",
      "body": "![ballot-box.jpeg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmZffr1bYarTWbS46m3MSAeJKXwfK5Fw2j3jWP4r94umDq/ballot-box.jpeg)\nThe most obvious thing that makes voluntaryism different from any other “political” philosophy is that it advocates NOT participating in politics at all. That means, among other things, NOT VOTING. While everyone else is frantically trying to “get out the vote” and convince everyone it is their civic duty to vote, voluntaryists proudly refuse to vote. No matter how many people accuse us of apathy or shirking our responsibility as “citizens” or letting the bad guys “win,” we know that ours is the moral position.\n\nSome people argue against voting from the practical perspective. A simple look at the numbers makes it evident that one person’s vote cannot possibly influence the outcome of a national or statewide or even local election. You have a better chance of winning a lottery than making a difference in an election. Even if you spend a lot of time “campaigning” so you can get other people to vote with you, the odds are against you having any significant effect on the election. Voluntaryists agree with that logic but consider it a minor consideration.\n\nAnother practical argument against voting is that it takes far too long to learn enough about the candidates to make even a slightly informed decision about which candidates might do the things you would want them to do. Even if you don’t bother learning about the individual candidates and vote along party lines because you take it on faith that all the candidates will follow their party’s lead, finding out where each side stands on each issue is a daunting task. With only two or three parties to choose from, you can be sure that none of them agree with you 100 percent on every issue that might come up. That means that whoever you vote for is bound to do some things that you do NOT want them to do. The most common solution for that is to avoid getting any information about what your candidate does after being elected. Trust me; you don’t want to know.\n\nAn equally valid practical reason for not voting is the opportunity cost of whatever amount of time you have to spend on evaluating the candidates and their positions, determining the likelihood of them keeping their campaign promises (very unlikely), and going to the voting places on election day. With the fast pace of life today, there are a significant number of productive things you could accomplish in the same amount of time. Why would you want to spend time on things you can’t control when there are so many things in life that you can control?\n\nHowever, voluntaryists do not base their decision to not vote on any of the “practical” reasons. It is mainly based on the moral reason. No matter who said it, George Washington, Kansas Senator John James Ingalls, or someone else, “government is force.” Every law that government passes is enforced by violence or the threat of violence.\n\nEven something as innocuous as the law against driving your car with a broken taillight can result in you being legally killed, as happened to Philando Castile on July 6, 2016. Although Castile politely complied with every order given by the government employee who shot him to death with seven shots at close range, his killer was found “not guilty” of breaking any law.\n\nThere is a saying that the military is only good at “breaking things and killing people.” That is also true of the government in general. The government does a lot of things, like building infrastructure and providing “services” to various classes of people, that it claims could not be done by anyone else. It argues that people show they want the government to do everything it does by voting for representatives who vote to spend money to do all those things. Nothing could be further from the truth.\n\nWhile it is true that there are lots of people who have been brainwashed to think the government is necessary for “public goods,” the fact is that free markets allow people to “vote” directly with their own money for everything they want. If people want something, entrepreneurs will always find a way to provide it for a profit, unless the government’s monopoly on legal violence and on any enterprise it chooses prevents them from doing so. For example, in 1844, Lysander Spooner proved that his private company, the American Letter Mail Company, could deliver the mail for almost half the cost of the US Post Office. Naturally, he was forced out of business by arrests and fines, which would have been called kidnapping and extortion if done by anyone other than the government.\n\nBecause the government doesn’t have to satisfy customers who pay voluntarily for what they want, it has no incentive to provide the best products and services at the best price. In fact, it has no way of knowing what the best products and services are or what people would be willing to pay for them. At the same time, the people have no way of knowing how much less expensive those goods and services would be if provided by competition on the free market.\n\nWhat does that have to do with voting? People who understand the true nature of government and the evil it does must take a moral stance in dealing with it. It isn’t immoral to give a mugger your wallet to dissuade him from killing you, but it is immoral to participate in his crime by finding other victims for him. Acting as if he has done nothing wrong so that other people can’t see him as a criminal is immoral. Participating in the political process is a public way to enable the crimes and injustices of government. It is explicitly giving your consent to all of its actions in breaking things and killing people.\n\nAlso, voting gives you a vested interest in the outcome psychologically. No matter how much you tell yourself that you were just voting for the lesser of two evils, it has put you on the side of rooting for one of the evils. As if it were a game, your human nature makes you see only good in “your side” and only evil in the “other side.” If your guy “wins” the game… er, election, how can you then protest the evil he does as if you had no part in enabling him? If your guy “loses,” how do you avoid the rationalization that things would have been different if he had won?\n\nThere was a popular 1983 film called War Games in which a military super-computer almost starts World War III when a young hacker starts playing what he thinks is a game called Global Thermonuclear War with it. Disaster is averted only when the super-computer learns the concept of mutually assured destruction and tells its creator that nuclear war is “a strange game” in which “the only winning move is not to play.” Politics is the same kind of game. The only winning move is not to play.\n\nvoluntaryistliving.com",
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      "author": "joybran",
      "body": "![girl standing broken chains.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXq4TseZrdt6FPFmMcNaysy5KLiFdV3whdf46ycF4k6Yu/girl%20standing%20broken%20chains.jpg)\n\nMy blog is called Voluntaryist Living because I’m writing about living my life as a voluntaryist, but what exactly is a voluntaryist? The Merriam-Webster dictionary, which bills itself as “America's most trusted online dictionary for English word definitions, meanings, and pronunciation,” doesn’t even have a definition for “voluntaryist.” \n\nI don’t know how many people identify themselves as voluntaryists, but I see the number has been growing for the last few years. You usually have to go to Wikipedia to get a decent definition of words like “voluntaryist” that haven’t made it into the dictionaries yet. \n\nWhen people ask me whether I’m a liberal or a conservative, or more often assume that I am one or the other, I say that I am neither. Then they might say “Ah, a libertarian.” No, not that either, although they are getting closer. Most of them look confused when I say voluntaryist, so I follow up with “I’m a person who believes that all interactions between human beings should be voluntary.” Many still look confused because they think that is too obvious to be a separate political philosophy. If it sounds obviously right to them, it is because they have never considered which of their daily interactions aren’t voluntary. \n\nIt is a rare person who might say “Oh, you’re an anarcho-capitalist who doesn’t vote.” Closer still, but not quite right. I did identify as an anarcho-capitalist before I heard about voluntaryism, but I have come to think that voluntaryism describes my philosophy better than anarcho-capitalism, especially since the meanings of both anarchism and capitalism are so widely disputed.\n\nIf a voluntaryist is someone with a unique philosophy, what are the characteristics of that belief system? How is it similar to and different from other philosophies, especially political philosophies? Voluntaryists agree with liberals in their concerns about human rights and human well-being but disagree about the best means to achieve those desired ends. We agree with conservatives about the benefits of free markets but disagree about the use of force to achieve social goals. \n\nWe are close enough to libertarians that, in many circumstances, we would not reject the label as misleading, the way we would reject other labels like liberal and conservative, socialist and nationalist, communist and fascist. Many libertarians might be called voluntaryists, based on their specific beliefs, although they haven’t considered identifying as such.\n\nBoth liberals and conservatives talk a lot about freedom, but neither believe in the foundational idea of self-ownership which lies at the heart of liberty. Wikipedia defines it best. “Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity, and be the exclusive controller of one's own body and life.” Most libertarians believe in self-ownership in theory, but are willing to condone some restrictions in practice. Voluntaryists believe in self-ownership and the responsibility that goes with it as a moral absolute.\n\nMany libertarians consider the non-aggression principle the primary requisite for libertarianism. According to Wikipedia, \"the non-aggression principle (or NAP; also called the non-aggression axiom, the anti-coercion, zero aggression principle or non-initiation of force) is an ethical stance that asserts that aggression is inherently wrong.\" Although voluntaryists believe in the NAP as an essential principle, it is not sufficient as a foundational belief for several reasons. Aggression and non-aggression are too complicated to define absolutely. \n\nMerriam-Webster defines aggression in three ways: “a forceful action or procedure (such as an unprovoked attack) especially when intended to dominate or master; the practice of making attacks or encroachments (especially unprovoked violation by one country of the territorial integrity of another); and hostile, injurious, or destructive behavior or outlook especially when caused by frustration.”\n\nBecause aggression can be defined as an attitude as well as specific behavior, it is too open to differences in perception to be truly useful as a moral guide. Also, there is the element of “provoked,” which can also be perceived differently by different people. While it is easy enough to say that the aggressor is the one who stuck first physically, there is plenty of disagreement about what constitutes provocation. \n\nCan words ever justify a physical attack? Perhaps they can if they are perceived as threatening. But that is a slippery slope. There have been some recent news articles about police officers being absolved of blame in the deaths of unarmed civilians because they believed their lives to be threatened, in spite of the fact that most reasonable people would find that belief ludicrous under the circumstances shown in videos of the confrontation.\n\nFor voluntaryists, it is more useful to speak of violence and the threat of violence rather than aggression. The NAP is most useful as a guideline for behavior in understanding that the person who initiates force or the threat of force is in violation of the principle and therefore is under a moral obligation to make whole the person he or she harmed by the violence or threat of violence.\n\nPerhaps the essential difference between voluntaryists and libertarians (as well as all other political philosophies) is the rejection of political means. All voluntary organizations are governed by rules, but those rules only apply to people who have voluntarily joined the organization and can freely leave. Any group that can be entered voluntarily and left voluntarily could be said to be governed voluntarily because whatever rules are in effect are explicitly consented to by the members of the organization.\n\nIn contrast, all political governments enforce their rules through violence or threats of violence against people who happen to reside in the territory over which they claim jurisdiction, regardless of consent. Every government is ruled by mandatory laws that nobody consents to either explicitly or implicitly. Remaining in the land where one was born is NOT an implicit consent to obey whatever edicts have been imposed by some “authority.” \n\nAll governments acquire all their resources through some form of taxation, which is either theft or extortion because all taxes are enforced through violence or threat of violence. Likewise, all government edicts are enforced through violence or threat of violence. Because all governments claim a monopoly on the use of legalized violence within their claimed territories, all political governments are inherently illegitimate and immoral.\n\nFor a voluntaryist, any attempt to use the force of government is a form of violence. Participation in the political process, whether through voting or running for office, is always an attempt to use the violence of government to enforce your preferences. \n\nEven if you are voting for someone who, for example, promises to lower tax rates, you are trying to force your preference for lower taxes on some people who may believe that higher taxes are necessary for some “noble” reason. You are also stating with your vote that you want those lower tax rates rather than the “no taxes” which you may believe is the moral stance. Worse than that, you have no control over what “your” candidate will do once in office. Even if he keeps his promise on taxes, he may do other things that you find more immoral.\n\nMany libertarians consider voting a form of self-defense rather than aggression because they see it as the only way to prevent others from forcing THEIR preferences on them. This view of self-defense is one of the things that we voluntaryists see as a weakness of the NAP. It is too easy to define self-defense so broadly that it becomes a justification for aggression and the use of force. \n\nHowever, aside from the question of whether it is possible to vote in “self-defense,” we see more subtle problems with participation in the political process. Even if you realize that your vote has no chance of affecting the outcome of an election, your participation is evidence of consent to the result. Psychologically, it gives you a vested interest in the issue, which can compromise your sense of your own morality.\n\nBesides, any time or effort spent in deciding who or what to vote for, or trying to convince others how to vote, is time and effort that you could better spend living your life as a sovereign individual. As social beings who naturally desire peace and prosperity, our time is best spent creating value for others who will freely trade with us.\n\nThe dominant attitude of a voluntaryist is “live and let live.” We control our own goals and purposes but we cannot and should not seek to control the goals and purposes of others. We can find great joy in pursuing our own interests, creating goods and services that others value, and building relationships with people who are willing to deal with us voluntarily. Trying to control other people against their will is usually an exercise in frustration. Succeeding in gaining the power to control others is the path toward corruption.\n\nAs human beings, we are by nature capable of both great good and great evil. Minding our own business and looking for voluntary ways to interact with others tends to bring out the best in our natures. Trying to force others to do what we want rather than what they want brings out the worst. \nWhile it is true that we need to protect ourselves from those who wish us harm, there are both healthy and unhealthy ways to accomplish that objective. Feeding our anger and insisting on “justice” in an unjust world is not a healthy way. We can find freedom in an unfree world by accepting the reality of the evil and mitigating it the best we can without putting our energy into fighting it with violence.\n\nFor example, taxation is theft, but getting angry about it and risking your life and freedom by refusing to pay is not the way to live and let live. It is much less stressful to look for ways to minimize the taxes you have to pay and just pay the ones you can’t avoid. As an individual, you have a lot of options in how you live your life and the trade-offs you choose in making money and keeping your money. That includes how much risk you are ready to face and even how much discomfort you are willing to endure to avoid various taxes. No-one can make those decisions for you.\n\nOne of the most misunderstood aspects of freedom and voluntaryism is responsibility. Voluntaryists, like libertarians, are sometimes accused of being libertines, apparently in the sense of being unrestrained by morality and seeking freedom without responsibility. The opposite is the case. Voluntaryists have to take the responsibility of developing their own moral code rather than mindlessly accepting the rules of “morality” set down by some “authority.” \n\nVoluntaryists understand that freedom without responsibility is, in fact, impossible. Unlike slaves, free people cannot try to escape the responsibility for their actions by claiming that they were forced to take those steps. Even those people who attempt to abdicate their responsibility for their actions, cannot truly escape answerability because they are the ones who suffer the consequences of their actions.\n\nTo live life as a voluntaryist does require different characteristics from those customarily inculcated by our society from childhood. We learn patriotism, belief in democracy, obedience to authority, conformity, and that right ends justify any means. Some of the ideas that are drilled into the impressionable minds of little children are ridiculous when stated honestly, but they are still hard to overcome. For example, ordinary people cannot be trusted to run their own lives, but they are fully capable of electing rulers who will not be corrupted by the power of having a monopoly on legalized violence. And those rulers are more capable of running everyone’s lives than even the smartest rational human being who has no desire to run anyone else’s life. \n\nThe first step in freeing one’s mind from the irrational beliefs that have been drilled into it is to recognize that the authorities we have been trained to trust are the ones who have done us the most harm. Libertarian and former history professor Tom Woods calls it “educational malpractice” and provides a great deal of historical information that refutes what mandatory government indoctrination camps taught us for so many of our formative years.\n\nThe first skill that we need to develop is critical thinking. According to the Foundation for Critical Thinking, “critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” Another definition is “the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself.” We can develop our critical thinking skills by self-directed, self-disciplined examination of our own thought processes. \n\nWe must re-examine every basic assumption about life that we received from parents, teachers, and other authority figures. There is no need to blame the parents and teachers who damaged our ability to think critically. Even the best of parents with the best of intentions can’t pass on the knowledge they never acquired themselves. \n\nWe can open our minds to new information and to new ways of examining information. If we honestly question everything we have been taught, we can learn to tell the difference between facts that match our experience of life and the propaganda that motivated us to act in ways contrary to our own best interests.\n\nTo exercise our self-ownership and live a life of freedom, we must consciously choose our purpose and our goals. To write down our goals on paper where we can read and reread them is the best way to assure that we are making our own decisions rather than allowing others to make the most critical decisions for us. It isn’t easy to examine one’s life in the depth necessary to do this written exercise, but it is the surest way to claim control over one’s life. \n\nBy consciously choosing to live independently and fulfill our own deepest desires, we can indeed take control of our lives. Instead of reacting to others and just accepting whatever shows up in our experiences, we can find proactive ways to create the life we want. This strategy applies to all aspects of life: health, relationships, financial, spiritual, emotional. We can exercise more control than we ever believed once we take responsibility for choosing the things we want in life. The more independence we can imagine, the more independent we can be.\n\nLive and let live is an attitude, but it is also a habit, or more accurately a whole group of habits. Even if you have had bad practices in the past like resentment, anger, jealousy, or gossip, you can change those patterns once you become aware of them and consciously set goals to practice better habits in the future. If you fill your life with goals based on creativity, production, learning, and understanding, there won’t be room for the old harmful habits. But you have to make commitments to yourself, and you have to hold yourself accountable for keeping those obligations on a daily basis. Nobody is flawless in starting new habits, but anyone can change their habits if they have a big enough reason and keep that reason always in sight.\n\nAlthough I have thought of myself as a voluntaryist for a long time, I have not always lived my life according to the principles I believe. I have had the bad habit of letting external factors influenced my attitude. I have discounted my own strength and my own will and blamed others for my failures. It is easy to blame the evil government or the foolish people who support the evil government for bad results in the world. \n\nThe fact is that it doesn’t matter who or what is to “blame.” The only one I can control is myself, and I accomplish that by continually working on my own habits of thought and character and action. The time spent thinking about what to blame is the time that could be better spent thinking about what I can do myself to change whatever situation I don’t like. That is an ongoing process. I hope you find my journey engaging and informative.\n\nvoluntaryistliving.com",
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      "body": "![thinking_female300.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmfCUeYSYpxMUdJEXGsmWH1RytQgNsXVt7YnaUqzwnm7WV/thinking_female300.jpg)\nWhy would a voluntaryist write a blog post (https://steemit.com/history/@joybran/court-historians-fly-into-a-frenzy) that sounds like she is defending General John Kelly, General Robert E. Lee, and, of all things, the Confederacy? All nation states enslave their \"citizens\" with onerous taxes and debilitating regulations, but the Confederacy was even worse in writing the institution of chattel slavery into its foundational documents.\n\nAll military officers, including or especially generals, are people who have abandoned all of their principles and morality in their vow to follow orders without question. Generals, in particular, have dedicated their lives and careers to dealing death and destruction on \"the enemy,\" whoever their civilians overlords have decided that might be. With the vast majority of Americans still worshiping the State and its military \"heroes,\" how could I even risk the appearance of defending such people?\n\nMy first thought was that the truth is the truth, no matter who says it or why they say it. Even if Kelly is a mass murderer and an enabler of authoritarian government, and also if he was telling the truth just to argue for compromise on principles that shouldn't be compromised, he was still speaking the truth. There were people of good faith on both sides of the War Between the States, and the causes of the war were much more complicated than just slavery or just states' rights. It is equally foolish to say that the war was only about slavery as to say that slavery had nothing to do with the war.\n\nIt is also true that, in those days, people identified with their states rather than with their nation. That is why Robert E. Lee felt duty bound to kill his fellow Americans for Virginia, and why that was considered the \"honorable\" position by people on both sides of the war, both before and since. It would have been nice if he had realized that the honorable stand was refusing to fight, but it would be impossible to expect that from a man of his time and circumstances.\n\nIn all the talk about the political causes, it seems that the economic reasons have been largely ignored. In particular, recent historians ignore one of the fundamental problems of a large national government--passing edicts that impact the entire territory with all of its different local economies. When a Congress dominated by northerners passed laws favoring the North's industrial economy at the expense of the South's agricultural economy, secession seemed like an obvious solution to many southerners, whether they were slaveholders or not. To a voluntaryist like myself, decentralization is one of the most promising trends in current affairs. If the end goal is seven billion sovereign nations in the world, the secessionist movements in the US and around the world are encouraging.\n\nI finally realized that I was thinking about something else when I wrote about Kelly and his critics. He, his critics, and many other people these days act as if history is good for nothing except finding anecdotes to bolster whatever argument they want to make, whether the stories are real or not. There seems to be little effort to understand the thinking of people in other times and relate that thought to what we see around us today. For example, it is fashionable to be outraged that Robert E. Lee justified his slave-owning by saying his slaves were better off than they would have been starving in their home country in Africa. It is more useful to ask how an educated man like him could be so self-deluded as to believe such a thing. Then look around and see how many people have deluded themselves into repeating ridiculous slogans like \"we have to fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here.\"\n\nThe point is to always search for the truth, in history and the present. If we can understand why people believe obviously false assumptions, we can better communicate our vision of peace and prosperity.\n\nvoluntaryistliving.com",
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      "body": "![lee statue.jpeg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXfcTfbfvw7aPHUYMqtNBDukbVSeJzxDHtB3J9JB7bhEQ/lee%20statue.jpeg)\n\nI'm no fan of John F. Kelly but to see him savaged by the court historians for daring to say that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man disturbs me. It has only been in the last few years that anyone suggested Robert E. Lee was NOT an honorable man. That is why so many statues of him have been erected over the years. As Kelly pointed out, General Lee was deeply conflicted but felt that his duty lay in protecting his state, Virginia, from a federal government that was attacking and invading it. Kelly merely pointed out the obvious, that there were people of good faith on both sides of the tragic conflict that killed so many Americans. He also reminded us, quite truthfully, that Americans in those days identified more strongly with their states than with their national government.\n\nSlavery is, and always has been, a great evil, with the enslavement of one race by another the very worst form of this crime. For most of human history, slavery (like war and politics) has been considered a \"necessary evil.\" While I would argue that no evil is necessary, I have to understand that most people throughout history have not believed this. Lee, like most slave-owning Southerners, had to justify the practice in his mind, as so many people today have to rationalize war and politics, but there were already many people in the South who understood that chattel slavery was wrong. Those people were fighting to protect their homeland from invasion by Northerners, not to perpetuate an institution that had little to do with them.\n\nThe idea that everyone on the Union side was fighting to \"free the slaves,\" and everyone on the Confederate side was fighting to keep them enslaved is ludicrous. Imagine a military commander giving a pep talk to the troops saying \"let's go out there and kill the enemy to free the slaves\" (or keep them enslaved). But that is what the court historians of today would have us believe.\n\nI'm old enough to remember a time when American history teachers were not quite so foolish as to say that slavery was the only cause of the war. But even in those days, they called it the Civil War, as if two factions were fighting for control of a government. The most neutral name for the war would be the War Between the States, but a more accurate and descriptive name would be the War for Southern Independence or the War of Northern Aggression. Now it seems like nationalist historians want to call it the War to End Slavery.\n\nIf the only way to end slavery in America was to fight a war over it, how was it that every other civilized nation in the world was able to stop slavery peacefully within a few years of each other? What has happened to our country and to our language that anytime someone tells the truth about the Confederacy and American history, he (or she) is automatically labeled a racist or white supremacist? Why are we not allowed to feel sympathy for not only the victims of racial injustice but also the victims of political injustice?\n\nvoluntaryistliving.com",
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      "body": "![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQbWnMUx56TnDXA2gDAtPpnXm7DzxzYc9vMLh2vWTRSwx/image.png)\n\nAbout a year ago, I got the idea that the one thing I wanted to do with the rest of my life was to write about being a voluntaryist. So I bought the domain name voluntaryistliving.com, set up a simple Wordpress blog, and posted the only thing about voluntaryism I had ever written--the story of my journey to voluntaryism. Great start but then what?\n\nIn retrospect, it seems evident that I should have just started writing regularly, whether I knew what I was doing or not, whether my writing was any good or not, whether anybody was reading it or not. However, the fact was that doubts and fears overcame me. I had learned a lot about voluntaryism and had argued on forums like Digg about those ideas, even apparently persuading a few people to open their minds a little, which seemed pretty amazing to me. In spite of that, I was terrified of making a fool of myself, of being rejected, of failing to find an audience, even of wasting time that I \"should\" be spending more productively.\n\nI had retired because of health issues, but my health had improved enough that I could do things that didn't require a lot of mobility or physical exertion. I needed to earn some money, and I knew that a lot of people were doing that online, but I didn't have a clue how to do it, especially with just a blog, and especially with a topic as obscure as voluntaryism.\n\nI had plenty of excuses to put off writing my blog. I needed to improve my writing. I needed to learn about either monetizing a blog or earning money online some other way. I needed to find an audience for ideas about voluntaryism and find out what they might want from a blog about voluntaryist living.\n\nFast forward to October 2017. I've been working on my writing, but mainly I've been learning about internet marketing. There are lots of ways to earn money by selling both physical and digital products online. There are lots of people making big money online, but a lot more people spinning their wheels trying to make a little money online. I was one of the latter for most of the last year. There are no foolproof get-rich-quick schemes, but there are some fantastic opportunities for people who are able and willing to work both hard and smart.\n\nAlthough I'm having some success with my online niche store selling physical products, the main lesson I have learned is that you are better off following your passion than trying to choose what seems the most logical means to make money. Of course, the best course of action is to decide what you love and find someone who has made money doing that and is willing to coach others.\n\nSo here I am, finally ready to do what I could have done a year ago, just start writing and learn as I go about who will be interested in the things I have to say and what value I can create for them so they will want to follow me. If you are interested in my journey, please join my email list.\n\nhttp://eepurl.com/c9i4oH\n\nvoluntaryistliving.com",
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      "body": "![rainbow hands.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRhQtZ5jzJhUUFqnmTopubLwCFVbP42bTBkcK97M6ezsq/rainbow%20hands.jpg)\n\nLibertopia is a community that espouses and promotes a society of free and responsible people. We believe in the power of individuals to govern their own affairs through voluntary associations without coercion. \n\nEach individual is unique in the universe with inherent dignity. Each possesses free will and the sovereign power to choose his or her own destiny. While recognizing human failures, we believe that the best response to them is to live and let live; letting people experience the consequences of their bad choices rather than trying to control them with violence and coercion.\n\nWe believe in the non-aggression principle as a guiding ethical framework for civilization. Any initiation of force or coercion is a violation of this axiom. The only legitimate use of force is in direct defense against acts of violence.\n\nOur mission is to promote peaceful interactions with our fellow man. We encourage responsible conflict resolution by recognizing the value of the individual and respecting the equal rights of others. We support a community within which we can learn from one another and express and share our many gifts and talents.\n\nWe believe that order cannot be imposed on society by any ruler(s) but must arise from a shared respect for private property, beginning with a person's ownership of his or her body. The exclusive use of personal property is a requirement of life itself. The recognition of this fact provides order to society by defining voluntary interactions between people as being the only legitimate means of peaceful coexistence.\n\nThe reality of life is that individuals have unlimited wants and needs in a world of limited resources. Fortunately, humans are capable of enormous creativity in finding ways to create new resources and to fulfill their desires. The blessings of the scientific revolution have shown that advancing technology can create new resources that not only make our lives easier but weaken the rationale for \"redistributing\" those resources. \n\nResources are also called wealth, which is not just money. Centralized rulers claim the authority to create wealth and to redistribute it, but they are incapable of creating wealth, no matter how much \"money\" they print. And the \"redistribution\" is simply theft.\n\nOnly the voluntary actions of individuals can create wealth. When two people are free to trade their property (including their labor) voluntarily without restriction, each of them ends up better off after each transaction, or they would not have made the trade, which creates wealth. When an individual is free to innovate and to profit from his innovation, he creates wealth. The more voluntary inventions and trades that take place, the more wealth is created. In contrast, every involuntary transaction makes someone worse off, thereby destroying wealth.\n\nA free market (in contrast to the crony capitalism that is called a free market in America today) means being able to trade without restrictions. It solves problems by incentivizing people to create resources for which others will trade.  By creating wealth for all, a free market allows a spontaneous order to arise naturally from free people pursuing their happiness peacefully.\n\nWarfare, violence, and coercion are all rationalized as means that are justified by good ends. We believe not only that the ends never justify the means, but that those evil methods will always lead to unwanted results. We visualize a world where all interactions between people are voluntary. In such a world free people flourish, enjoying peace, prosperity, an explosion of creativity, and diversity of lifestyles.\n\nAlthough centralized power destroys wealth and creates problems for humanity, we do not believe in fighting against centralization. We believe that the world is becoming more decentralized as the benefits of freedom become more apparent to more people around the world. We believe that building communities of people who reject political means in favor of economic means will make the old paradigms of power and violence obsolete. Our mission is to bring together those individuals who want to build voluntary societies.",
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